Format shift for hard drives

Hard drive changes

For the first time in 30 years, hard drives are set to undergo their biggest format shift so that by early 2011, all hard drives will use an "advanced format". This will change how they go about saving data that people store on them.

The move to the advanced format will make it easier for hard drive makers to produce bigger drives that use less power and are more reliable.

Through the International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association (Idema) all hard drive makers have committed to adopting the 4K advanced format by the end of January 2011.

Hard drive makers have begun an education and awareness campaign to let people know about the advanced format and to warn about the problems it could inflict on users of older operating systems such as Windows XP.

512 bytes in size

Since the days of the DOS operating system, the space on a hard drive has been formatted into blocks 512 bytes in size. The 512 byte sector became standardised thanks to IBM which used it on floppy disks, the BBC report.

While 512 bytes was useful when hard drives were only a few megabytes in size, it makes less sense when drives can hold a terabyte (1000 gigabytes), or more of data.

"The technology has changed but that fundamental building block of formatting has not," said David Burks, a product marketing manager for storage firm Seagate.

This fine resolution on hard drives is causing a problem, he said, because of the wasted space associated with each tiny block.

Each 512 byte sector has a marker showing where it begins and an area dedicated to storing error correction codes. In addition a tiny gap has to be left between each sector. In large drives this wasted space where data cannot be stored can take up a significant proportion of the drive.

Moving to an advanced format of 4K sectors means around eight times less wasted space, but will allow drives to devote twice as much space per block to error correction.

This shift also allows manufacturers to make more efficient use of the real estate on a hard drive.

"We can put more data on the disk, it's about 7-11 percent more efficient as a format." said Steve Perkins, a technical consultant for Western Digital.

Jodie Humphries

Jodie Humphries graduated from Bath Spa University with a BA Hons in Creative Writing in 2008. She has worked for GDS Publishing for the digital group since July 2009. She has previous experience with writing for the web, running her own website since April 2007.

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